Low spend March

[Orcubed]

Following on from February.

I’m trying not to spend outside of our existing direct debits, standing orders, birthdays etc, also trying to keep groceries etc low. I failed badly in February, hoping March will be better!

All newcomers welcome!

Ill join.
Jan and Feb have been crazy. 2 dcs birthdays gone plus 1 march but that's all paid for, presents, party, cake, party bags. Which is what made jan and Feb expensive

Somehow weve managed to nearly clear all our cards and PayPal credit. All except 200 which will be paid this week

Plan to save what we would have been paid on cards moving forward.

We have a home diy project going. Which is more expensive than 1st planned. But that will be the only expense hopefully.

Need fuel this week
Bitnof fresh veg, milk etc but everything else is stocked up

Joining you all for a bit of accountability. My grocery bill has just been getting out of control and I’ve ended up shopping on the credit card at the end of the last couple of months which I can’t afford to pay off, something has to change. The last two weeks I’ve got 2 “TooGoodToGo” boxes from ALDI, £3.30 each and they’ve been great. Week 1 mostly bread, fruit and vegetables and week 2 salad, smaller amount of fruit and vegetables and some good ready meals. I’m planning to de this weekly and meal plan round about whatever I get. I would love to try Olio but I know dh wouldn’t like me going to people’s houses so I would need to time it for when I am out anyway.

I’m hoping not to need to spend anything else until next Saturday!

Just wood for stove yesterday. £109 house insurance. My renewal was £203 so happy with that. I always compare if the renewal has more than a £20 increase Also £21 for new stovetop kettle

@grannycake that's a great saving on the insurance! We always compare rather than just accepting the renewal quote, sometimes they can be silly amounts!

@Threeboysandadog I started using olio last week. It's absolutely saving me at the moment. Locally to me it's nearly all pastries let over from supermarkets but it's keeping the kids fed at breakfast. Yes you have to go to people's houses but the goods are all bagged by the supermarket so feels fairly hygienic. Sometimes it's doorstep collection from a box outside.

Definitely give it a go if you can.

£94.84 on groceries this week bringing the total to £121.15 so far

Next week is going to be a huge shop though as I’ve finished lots of cupboard staples!

@Threeboysandadog our aldi doesn’t seem to do TooGoodToGo. I’m a bit nervous of olio too but I don’t know why!

@JustSoTired23 well done on clearing the cards etc, that’s quite an achievement.

@xogossipgirlxo i think a little bit of baby spending is allowed 😁. Feeling a little bit envious, although I know I do not want any more children the excitement of a new baby is so special and I could do that bit forever!

@livingthegoodlife until now, most of the Olio collections have been the other side of town so less cost effective from a petrol point of view but there’s a new one not far from me and very close to a small Co-op that I use for yellow sticker items. She seems to do Tesco and Iceland on different nights. I might be able to to go to the co-op and collect from her at the same time.

@Orcubed I know dh would not like me collecting from other peoples houses so I haven’t mentioned it too him. He thinks TooGoodToGo is bad enough. He grew up in poverty before benefits existed. He would have preferred me not to apply for FSM for ds3 but the school also benefits from this so, for me, it’s a no brainer.

@xogossipgirlxo congratulations! Boys are fab, I have three.

Checking in waves

@Cottagecheeseisnotcheese I have given DH a good talking to ;-) and told him that we are spending the equivalent of nearly £2k a year on coffees, cakes, little treats etc. I think that hit home for him as we have just booked our summer holiday which was around £2500 so it's clear that we basically could have afforded another holiday this year if it weren't for this! We have agreed that a cafe once a week is a nice treat but no more. On saturday we were at a kids softplay party and we didn't buy any coffees (kids food was already included) and then on sunday we went to a big country park place and again managed to resist buying any coffees, same on the way home at the services.

@xogossipgirlxo congratulations on the lovely news :-)

Trying to save an extra £200 this month towards holiday spending money, so have cut my food budget for the rest of the month down to £120. Because of our pay dates, I run our budget to the 23rd of each month so in theory £120 should be easily doable as it's only 2.5 weeks and I've got a fair few bits in the cupboard and freezer already. But I know it will require some planning!

Pseudonamed

I live in Ireland also. Did you know that you can claim 20% back of the cost of braces for a child. You need to get a med 2 from. If you look up citizeninformation.ie and put in med 2 form it will give you more details on this and what is covered.

I would also look up the ccpc.ie website. It's the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission website.
It has a lot of information on how to save money and getting better value on bills and savings rates ect. I found it good in the past for information.

Checking in - NSD today 😊😊

NSD for me - hurray!

But need to go to shop as no fruit or protein for girls' packed lunches. Managed to cobble together wraps from the freezer & some grated cheese, carrot sticks and a piece of banana bread for tomorrow.

NSD yesterday & today. So much easier during the week!
Meal plan done and lunches made for the week… but a colleague I don’t often see has mentioned going out for lunch tomorrow… which would be a nice change!

Almost a no spend day today until I had to get ds3 (16) a taxi home from work. It’s snowing here and I can’t drive in snow.

£11.60 for a taxi.

Congratulations xo - boys are lovely!
No NSDs for me so far this week, but I'm hopeful for today! I have my lunch and coffee as well as snack for ds when I pick him up from after-school club.
We had a nice weekend visit to a nearby town, had lunch out there at a lovely vegan café and an ice cream for ds. He must have been freezing, but he really wanted it, so I agreed!
Then £30 for a top up of lunch, fruit and salads for the week. Food really is shooting up in price - even with a couple of bargains, I'm sure a year ago it would have been closer to £20. But we're very lucky in that we have some wiggle room atm. A few years ago when ds was in childcare it was much harder on the budget. I hope the government will help working parents more during those early years, but sadly not holding my breath...
Good luck all.

Snow here too so not heading into the office meaning likely another NSD!

I've just totted up my spends so far for March and it is already over £800. Which is over £100 per day 😱

In terms of treats or non-essentials it is just brunch at ikea £10, train tickets ( kind of necessary though) £30. And 2 coffees £7.

That's it!
Oh and world book day costume I didn't use so I'm returning.

The rest is just household bills and essentials shooting out my account.

The item I bought in ikea went from savings so didn't count in my monthly spend.

I'm not working at the moment and a single parent- so I'm a bit alarmed at how much money just constantly shoots out my account.

NSD yesterday. Small spend in local coop for coffee and bread planned for today

does anyone happen to know what the cheapest piece of fruit is? Per portion, not per kilo. Its easy to compare apple prices against apples, but to compare against all the fruits?

basically i need to put a piece of fruit in the kids' lunchboxes everyday and need to buy the cheapest option. Today they have carrot sticks because I have no fruit. Im going to the shop (reluctantly) later today to buy fruit. Is it best if i take a calculator and just walk up and down to work it out?

or any other clever fruit ideas for lunchboxes?

livingthegoodlife , Carrot sticks are a good shout, if you make them yourself aswell it will help keep the cost down. How about buying a big bag of sultanas and portion them yourself . For fresh fruit I would say apples are probaby the cheapest but thats a guess.

@livingthegoodlife it depends where you shop, but I think often one of the cheapest fruits are bananas AND they are really filling and full of energy. Other fruits may occasionally be slightly cheaper per piece but then I often feel like you have to pad out the lunch with other things. I usually get a pack of 7 bananas for 80p.

A big bag of raisins can also be portioned up and work out very cheap but they're really not at all filling unless you eat an insane amount.

Raisins are definitely a good idea, I have loads in the cupboard. Thank you!

I agree about bananas being filling.

I'm off out in a couple of hours, going to go armed with my phone calculator! Lol

Fruit cost update:

Shop - Morrisons

Mini peeler oranges 8p
Bananas 12p
Apples 13p
Kiwi 17p

Spend on fruit = £3.47

I bought wonky apples & savers oranges. Total spend £9.82 but that includes milk, tinned soup, sandwich meat, mayonnaise & a notebook (present).

Normal apples were around 26p!

@Threeboysandadog
@Coffeecoffeeinmytummy , @moimichme thank you very much 😊

I find apples and bananas the cheapest, we eat them daily.

Yesterday £68 grocery shopping.

Tomorrow our landlady is coming to discuss rent renewal, I'm expecting some increase, as we paid the same rent since we moved in here, which was 6 years ago eek (to be fair we offered 50 quid more as we liked the house, so we were overpaying a little bit). Hopefully she won't go too crazy as we like living here until we have our own house. We shall see.

All I had to do today was hand the prescriptions in at the pharmacy. I even took the dog with me in the car so that I couldn’t be too long. I still managed to enter the small Co-op where I spent £11:42 on some fruit, a meal deal for ds3 and chocolate biscuits.

I will try not to leave the house tomorrow.